Chapter 1255 Forestry Resources

"Integrating local tin resources also includes building smelters, tinplate production plants, power plants and other supporting facilities."

In order to save costs, East Africa will focus on integrating and optimizing the tin resources in the Isthmus of Kra, and finally provide refined materials and semi-finished products for East African local industries, reducing intermediate links and transportation costs.

Finger continued: "In terms of cultivating local cash crops, we will focus on developing local rubber planting, thereby replacing part of the rubber planting area in my country."

"Other aspects will focus on the development of other tropical forestry resources, such as fruits, timber and other cash crops suitable for tropical rainforest areas."

It can be seen that East Africa's development plan for the Isthmus of Kra has typical colonial characteristics, whether it is mineral resource development or plantation economic construction. There is only one purpose, that is, to turn the local area into a raw material supplier in East Africa.

As for the colonial market, this is also one of the most scarce things in East Africa. The colonial market scale in East Africa is not large. After all, the characteristics of many colonies in East Africa are small populations, and small populations naturally have low demand.

The Isthmus of Kra territory in East Africa still needs to clear out more than half of those who cannot be "integrated". When East Africa completes the "surgery" of cutting off the local area, the market size will be even smaller. However, there are gains and losses. The East African government does not lack the market of the Isthmus of Kra. After the immigrants arrive, it will not take many years for the local area to recover.

Finger said: "In addition, we plan to build an oil pipeline and two oil refineries in the local area. In addition to economic considerations, there are also energy and national defense strategic factors."

The Isthmus of Kra can be said to be in a very delicate place. Its west is close to the Beibu Gulf territory, and its east is not far from East Kalimantan. Both places are important oil producing areas in East Africa.

Therefore, the construction of an oil refinery in the local area is more significant in preventing the oil resources of the two places from flowing smoothly after the Strait of Malacca is cut off.

It is worth mentioning here that the oil in the Persian Gulf has not yet been developed, so the oil plants built in East Africa will be concentrated in Songkhla.

In addition to facilitating East Africa to transport the oil from East Kalimantan back to the country, it is also convenient to ensure the oil supply of the Pacific Fleet in the war situation.

Of course, this premise is that after the oil producing areas in East Kalimantan are occupied by other countries, East Africa loses the oil producing areas in the Pacific region and has to supply materials to the Pacific Fleet from the Indian Ocean.

However, the possibility of this happening is very small. The layout of the Kra Isthmus Territory for the oil industry actually includes East Africa's future consideration of oil energy, especially the export of oil from the Persian Gulf region to the Far East.

The Far East here is not limited to the Far East Empire. After all, most countries in the world lack oil resources.

East Africa, which holds many oil producing colonies such as the Beibu Gulf Territory, is no longer short of oil resources. Then exporting oil to other countries will inevitably become one of East Africa's important economic development methods.

In fact, East Africa is currently the world's largest exporter of refined oil and importer of crude oil. The most typical example is that East Africa imports oil from Russia, Venezuela and other places, and then processes it into gasoline or diesel, kerosene and other refined oil, and then exports it to other parts of the world. Today, the two major camps in Europe are the major buyers of refined oil in East Africa.

After talking about the oil industry, Finkel continued: "We will vigorously develop the forestry resources of the Kra Isthmus Territory, thereby reducing the scale of timber production in the eastern part of our country, actively utilizing the climate of the Kra Isthmus Territory, and turning the local area into an important forest farm to meet the timber gap in the relatively fragile climate and ecology of our country."

In addition to tin mines, the most valuable thing about the Kra Isthmus Territory is the rich local forest resources, and the timber gap in East Africa is still relatively large.

Although East Africa has the world's second largest tropical rainforest-the Congo rainforest. And the forest coverage rate in East Africa is as high as more than 50%. Logically speaking, East Africa is not short of timber.

However, the distribution of forest resources in East Africa is not even, concentrated in the central and western regions of East Africa, while in the east, except for the former Mozambique and Tanzania regions, most of them are still relatively dry.

So in order to focus on protecting local grasslands or forest resources, it is more cost-effective to import timber from the South Pacific region.

Especially the Kra Isthmus Territory, which is very close to the east coast of East Africa, the climate is also suitable for forest production, and the area is not small.

Fifty thousand square kilometers of land is indeed not worth mentioning in front of the giant East Africa, but this area is very large in many countries.

Most of these fifty thousand square kilometers of land are suitable for the development of forestry resources. Even if East Africa builds half of it into forest farms, it is not a small number.

The local forestry resources will be mainly supplied to Somalia and Kenya in East Africa. Somalia does not need to be said much, although the Turkana Province next to it is a large province of forestry output.

However, the land transportation from Turkana to Somalia is not convenient, and the forestry output of Turkana Province mainly comes from the mountains in the south of the Ethiopian Plateau, which is not convenient for wood processing and transportation.

Although there are some mountains and hills in the Isthmus of Kra, the altitude of these mountains is generally not high, and the plain area of ​​the Isthmus of Kra is not small.

Combined with the cost advantage of sea transportation, it can effectively provide cheap wood supply for the east coast of East Africa.

Although timber export is a very low-end industry, it does not mean that it is not important, but very important.

Construction, furniture, molds, industrial production, etc. are all large consumers of timber. Before the large-scale application of coal, timber was still the most important fuel in the world. Apart from other things, the demand for timber in the furniture industry alone is astonishingly large.

After all, tables, chairs, benches, etc. are basically essential daily necessities for every household, and they are also consumables. Although people are still relatively simple and know how to save in this era, it cannot change the fact that furniture products will inevitably decay over time.

East Africa has a population of more than 100 million, and the annual demand for timber is quite astonishing. Even for a simple product like chopsticks, a lot of forests are cut down every year. Although bamboo products in East Africa are also increasing, the scale of bamboo planting in Africa was originally small, so it is too early to replace timber.

At this time, Ernst also said: "Although East Africa is not short of forest resources, we should also note that the rapid development of East Africa in the past few decades has had a bad impact on some ecologically weak areas."

"Especially in the eastern part of our country, the Oriental Province, Bohemia Province, Lorraine Province and other regions are located at the intersection of grasslands and deserts."

"The destructive development of these areas in the past has caused important problems such as soil erosion and desertification."

"According to test data, in the past ten years, the Kalahari Desert and the Somali Desert have both shown an expansion trend, posing a threat to some habitable areas in our country."

"Among them, excessive felling of trees, grazing, etc. are the main factors, so for the ecological and environmental problems of the empire, we must also make plans in advance, such as setting ecological red lines, especially for ecologically fragile areas as little development as possible."

"And importing timber and minerals from colonies can protect our local ecological security to a certain extent."

Of course, Ernst just mentioned that the current mainstream in East Africa is still development-oriented. As for protecting the environment, it is not too late to change policies when the environment in East Africa really has big problems.

The fact is that the contradiction between East Africa's ecology and industrial development is still within the controllable range. After all, East Africa has only a few decades of history. Although the population of East Africa has grown to more than 100 million, which is not a small population, the population of East Africa has remained at tens of millions for a long time before the population exceeded 100 million.

This population size is still calculated by taking into account the indigenous people. After all, before East Africa colonized Africa, there were tens of millions of black people living here, and the current number of East African citizens has gradually accumulated to more than 100 million.